The co-op is alive and well - and growing

They attract little attention unless they fail, but co-operatives are far from a dying breed with their turnover growing by 81 per cent in the past decade.

That figure and 70 per cent asset growth over the decade emerge from the first detailed study of co-operatives in Australia conducted by University of Technology Sydney and Charles Sturt University for the Australian Centre for Co-Operative Research and Development.

Over the decade to 2000 the co-operative's assets grew by almost 70 per cent and 440,000 people became new members of co-ops taking the total membership to 1.3 million.

The figures exclude organisations such as the 2 million member NRMA which are mutuals but operate under a corporate structure.

The co-operatives the subject of the ACCORD report include agricultural marketing groups, credit unions and housing and health organisations.

Helen McCall, the CEO of ACCORD, said that far from fading out, almost 300 new co-operatives were formed during the 1990s showing that communities still see the co-operative structure as the best way to develop sustainable growth.

Co-operatives remain important in regional NSW, with 57 per cent of total co-operatives and 60 per cent of total turnover, located outside the state's metropolitan areas. In 2000 around 13,500 people were employed by co-ops and 5000 members were actively involved in their running.

Senior ACCORD research fellow Andrew Passey, who has researched UK co-operatives, said that research in that country had shown that customers of co-operatives believed that they were inherently more trustworthy than their corporate competition. A Cambridge University study showed 75 per cent of UK building society members said they liked the fact building societies, unlike banks, had no shareholders and 58 per cent of members said that they felt a sense of ownership that they did not experience when dealing with a bank. It also showed that building society members were four times more likely to trust their society than a limited liability company.

Mr Passey said in the UK there was emerging resistance to demutualisations.